image quality of DVD disks with BR Panasonic DMP-BDT500

I bought last week the Panasonic BluRay player DMP-BDT500. I do not own a TV but I playback my films on a Panasonic projector PT-AE2000.

I was amazed by the quality of the BluRay disks played with it but appaled when I play normal DVD disk : the quality of some of them is quite bad (some new disk, some old ones), their pixel definition gross, and really not as good as with my previous basic DVD player!

Anyone would got any idea what the reason behing this problem and how to fix that?

I bought last week the Panasonic BluRay player DMP-BDT500. I do not own a TV but I playback my films on a Panasonic projector PT-AE2000.

I was amazed by the quality of the BluRay disks played with it but appaled when I play normal DVD disk : the quality of some of them is quite bad (some new disk, some old ones), their pixel definition gross, and really not as good as with my previous basic DVD player!

Anyone would got any idea what the reason behing this problem and how to fix that?

Thanks!

Not a projector guru but a couple of thoughts come to mind - how big are you displaying the dvd's? Remember that digital has pixels and the bigger you display the screen, the larger the pixels must become. It sounds as if your old dvd player did a better job of upscaling than what your new BD player is doing. You can always do what many of us have done,,converted our dvd collection to BD!

I am not displaying big, whatever I use the same size than with my old DVD player, and even when I display very small, like the size of a TV, I can notice that the pixels are bigger with the BR player.

Which is weird: how come a basic DVD player released a few years ago would be better in upscalling DVDs than a BR player realeased last year and that is supposed to be at the top of the brand ?

And, yes, for sure, I will buy movies in BR now, when they do exist in this format... but for sure I won't find all the ones I have in BR! So that means I have to keep both players now, which was not at all what was what planned! Specialy as it looks like converting DVD disks to BR disks is not an easy thing...

It could be that your projector is trying to display the DVD's as 1080. Have you tried to manually set the output to 480p or 720p? Give that a try and hopefully our resident projector expert will chime in.

It could be that your projector is trying to display the DVD's as 1080. Have you tried to manually set the output to 480p or 720p? Give that a try and hopefully our resident projector expert will chime in.

I can see anomolies cropping up with a proj. and dvd. I agree with oblioman about settings, but you may want to try an older Oppo instead for dvd's. I see them on e bay all the time. In fact, I have a Oppo BDP-93, and still use my Oppo 970 for dvd's as the PQ is better actually than the 93 with just dvd. To be honest, I have yet to see a better PQ on dvd than an older Oppo. You can get high end models cheap now.

thanks guys, that is indeed very usefull, much more than the blend answer Panasonic sent me: "your Bluray player is in High definition with higher technology that's the reason why you said your bluray is good, but when it comes to DVD, it can't define it very well because they have different format. Sorry to say there is no specific settings for that."
I'll have a look right now at the settings. And if not I'll look for those Oppo 970 for DVD's!! ;-)

I have not seen the Panasonic DMP-BD500 in use but I have owned previous Panasonic Blu-ray players and considered DVD upscaling good, let's say average for Blu-ray players, but not up to standards of the better players like Oppo. I would be surprised if this new model is not on a par with the older models really but without ever seeing it first hand, I can't offer an opinion about whether expectations, setup or player scaling quality is the cause of the complaint here.

As an owner of both the Oppo DVD-970HD (sold in 2010) and BDP-93, I will offer an opinion, the 93 is considerably better. Both use a MediaTek chip for decoding and deinterlacing but the 93 chip is newer and better and the scaling is handled by Marvell Qdeo with the 93, a serious improvement. The DVD-970HD has an inherent problem that can't be overcome, its MediaTek chip causes picture cropping, slight but noticeable. There is an extensive coverage of the player and the issue at AVSForums if anyone is interested but the player is long discontinued and not really a viable purchase option at this point anyway. I bought one immediately upon release in 2006 and used it for a while but its replacement the DVD-980H is a player I love and MediaTek fixed the issue by the time the chip for that model was released.

You need to realize a few things - 1) you can't 'change the projector to 480 and 720p' - The projector has a fixed resolution and display method (in this case 1080 resolution and progressive display (vs interlaced)) which cannot be changed - everything you ever view on your projector will be converted to 1080p if it isn't already when it reaches the projector.

That being said the next goal is to determine if your projector or your blu-ray player scales (upconverts) better.

To do this go into your blu-ray player settings and make sure that the output is set to 1080 then watch a DVD. This is the blu-ray player upconverting the 480 dvd to 1080. Once you have done this go into your BLU-RAY PLAYER menu again and set it to 480p OUTPUT and then watch it again. By doing this you will be forcing the projector to do the upconverting (once again as EVERYTHING the projector ever displays will be at 1080p). By doing this you can see if there is a noticably better scaler in one device vs the other.

BTW some dvd's will just naturally upconvert better than others. Anamorphic Widescreen DVD's usually scale the best. The other thing is to make sure any 'zoom' functions are off.